Obama's Briar Patch
Let me confess up front that any reference to the beloved stories of Uncle Remus will be called racist, because Uncle Remus was the black fictional story-teller created by Joel Chandler Harris, a white author. It may be less obvious in the fables themselves, since the principal characters are usually "Br'er [Brother] Fox" and "Br'er Rabbit." Perhaps the most famous has Br'er Rabbit in the clutches of Br'er Fox and, thinking quickly, says something to the effect "Do with me what you will, Br'er Fox, but please, please, don't throw me in that briar patch!" This repeats until finally, because Fox wants to torture the Rabbit who has tricked him so many times before, he heaves the Rabbit into the briar patch, exactly as the rabbit really wanted. Rabbit can wander through unhurt and unbothered, but lets out some nasty screams just for effect until the Fox wanders off.
All of that is the long way of advising Republicans on this sequester business. Now that Obama has told us that the world will end promptly on March 1 when the sequester takes effect (and that it is ENTIRELY the fault of Republicans), the Republicans should encourage him to keep saying it, even while doing absolutely nothing to stop it. Perhaps, when the world does NOT end (cutting federal spending by 3% isn't exactly a massive asteroid strike), The People will start to notice that the demagoguery, hyperbole, and fear-mongering are nothing but flat-out lies, and that it IS possible to cut the federal budget. That will make the next big political battles, over the debt ceiling and the budget, a lot easier to win.